


Religion.

by reidbyers



Series: Honeymoon Series. [9]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, F/M, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 04:06:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11935974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reidbyers/pseuds/reidbyers
Summary: Even though it technically wasn’t a break up, both you and Spencer began to struggle with the knowledge that you were now apart from the agreement from both halves. This wasn’t technically the first time you’d told yourself it was better to be alone and it certainly wasn’t the first time Spencer had questioned whether or not it was better that way. However, no matter how many times you tried to let him go, you couldn’t forever.





	Religion.

Things between you and Spencer never felt permanent, like there was always some force trying to drag you away from one another. In reality that force was each other, constantly trying to come together but getting forced away like the same sides of two magnets. It was ironic because you could not have been more different, if you were to use that analogy then you should have been never apart, constantly together with everything perfect. That wasn’t how it was though, no matter how bad you wanted it clearly you came from different worlds, it had been obvious from the start but he had been so willing to come into your world that it had started to feel possible.

In reality, it was possible. The idea of it was at least, the more time you spent with Spencer the more your thoughts started to change and you found it easier to imagine a life where you weren’t so concerned about what the world would say about every little thing you did. You had been trying to hard to create a name for yourself, as if the one you had wasn’t good enough. There were so many things you wanted to do and people you wanted to be like and Spencer wanted a quiet life, he wanted to help making profiling become an acknowledged form of crime fighting and wanted to put bad guys away. When he came home from work he wanted to go home and not worry about anything, you however knew from the short time you had known each other he had been put under enough stress to last him years.

The conversation you shared after getting off the plane home was brief, not the sort you had with someone who you’d just spent a week in Los Angeles with, making love and sharing stories that neither of you had ever told before. Spencer still had those photographs he took, there were plenty naked ones of you, him and you together but also innocent ones; polaroids of the two of you laughing and you curled up in the blanket, splayed out on the beach with a grin plastered across your face. You knew he had them in his suitcase, what was he going to do them? He was still upset about everything that had happened back in Paradise (an ironic name to the club now) and you were starting to wonder if he was right to feel like that, you had been hasty in your dismissal of his actions but that was only because you were looking out for him. You hadn’t braved the newspapers yet but you were certain that they would be talking about the incident, definitely not good publicity for the BAU considering people already knew about Spencer’s job so maybe it was right that you were angry.

But he’d done it because he cared about you, cared that people were objectifying you and didn’t care for a second that you were a real person. Men like that were hard to change and Spencer knew that, knew about their psychology and that they had probably been raised to view women as nothing more as play things for men but luckily Spencer had a mother who had taught him that were just as equal to their male counterparts. It was perhaps a unpopular point of view since the media was always depicting women as being there almost like slaves for their husbands and any man in their life frankly, Spencer would always make a comment about how it was wrong and get met with strange glances.

Both of you had your reasons for feeling how you did but neither could come to an understanding, you were trying but Spencer could be surprisingly stubborn. The whole time you’d known him he had been so willing to please you and do whatever it was you wanted but with this he was stuck with his feet in the mud, not letting you pull him out no matter how hard you wanted to try. You weren’t about to beg for forgiveness to someone who wasn’t your boyfriend as you had previously stated but you would have liked for things to go back to how they were, where everything was sickly sweet and your craving for intimacy was finally filled.

It was discussed that while the vacation had been fun, it was for the best that you both left your interactions at that. It seemed that whenever things got good they quickly got worse so maybe it was better than there was nothing at all. It would save a lot of pain and you were certain that Spencer was not about to sign up for anymore drama, it wasn’t what he wanted from his life and while he enjoyed you and your company, their was baggage he knew he’d have to carry and he already had too much. Some of him wished he was able to live like you did, the fame and attention, everyone caring enough to want to learn every detail about you. As a little boy who grew up feeling lonely and unwanted, it might have felt nice to have felt important. Quickly though he reminded himself that none of the attention was good, fame was toxic and there was a bad feeling in his stomach about what was going to happen with you as time went on.

And just like that, you parted ways. He went in a taxi going to the tiny BAU headquarters where he was going to have to explain everything that happened while he was away to everyone since he had left on such a short notice and you were heading to the set of the film you were still working on. You weren’t exactly sure why they had been so okay with you leaving in the middle of shooting, perhaps it was because they knew you brought gossip and attention wherever you walked and in turn that would bring people to see the movie once it was out. Whatever the reason, you were thankful you were still wanted and tried to think about that instead of Spencer who kept creeping into your head.

You thought it was difficult to try and forget about him the first time he decided for the both of you it was better you were separate, it was so much harder the second now that you had so many more memories with him. You were rehearsing and shooting scenes of a romantic nature with another man and it almost felt like cheating, like you in someway were betraying Spencer by fluttering your lashes and heart eyes at his older man which in no way was true but you couldn’t stop the way your chest would ache. It had never been your intention to get attached like this, Spencer had just seemed like a fun time, the kind of guy you hadn’t seen more and you thought it would be fun to corrupt him a little. But what had actually happened was you’d fallen head over heels for him and now you couldn’t imagine being without him, it made it more difficult since you had agreed with him about leaving each other alone.

No matter how difficult it was for you to handle what was technically your break up, it was worse for Spencer. People somewhat expected that sort of drama to come from your life but with Spencer, his team were completely shell shocked. At first no one had mentioned it, they’d stayed deathly silent about the whole thing despite him catching a glimpse of a newspaper with your name in a headline before Penelope shoved it into the bin. It was awkward because just because he had fallen for the softness of your voice over the phone, he had promised everyone that the brief fling he’d had with you was over. How was he supposed to explain all this? Maybe it would be easier than he thought, surely some of them must have expected him to fall for you again that easily, he hoped that they’d just get whatever jokes they had about the situation out and then they could go back to normal but something told him that it was just wishful thinking.

He had to explain what had happened start to finish at least four times, leaving out certain details like the sex on the beach or anywhere else for that matter but he assumed they would just know it happened. The majority sided with him, Morgan in particular saying that he was in the right for standing up for his girl - Spencer didn’t correct him on the referral of you as his girl. Spencer thought that his feeling being validated might make him feel better but it didn’t, it only made him more upset over the whole situation at how whether he wanted to admit it or not, his actions had caused everything to fall apart. He wasn’t the type to have girls banging down his door begging to be with him, never in a million years would he have thought someone like you would have wanted to be with him and he’d thrown that away. It wasn’t something he regretted because he still stood by his actions but still, Spencer knew it was more than likely he’d never have something like what he had with you again.

“So, that’s it? You’re not going to go see her again?” Emily seemed the most distraught out of everyone over the fact that Spencer had admitted he didn’t think the two of you were going to meet up again, he decided that was probably because she had a bit of a crush on you two and perhaps thought that if he kept seeing you then she’d get to meet you one day. It had a small selfish background but more than anything she just wanted to see Spencer happy, she couldn’t deny that from what she had been told and read, it wasn’t exactly a stable relationship and maybe not what Spencer needed right now. She could see clear as day though that he was infatuated with you and the fact he thought you didn’t feel the same way tore him apart.

“She isn’t my girlfriend, it doesn’t seem fair that I should be putting all this effort in when she doesn’t like me back-” Before Spencer could continue to explain that he felt like the main reason you enjoyed his company was because you were lonely somehow within a crowd of people and had been looking for someone to escape all that with - Emily interrupted him.

“Of course she likes you! Has this whole genius thing been a trick because you’re acting pretty stupid right now.” Emily rolled her eyes and took a slip of her Cola Cola through the curly straw Garcia had stuck into her bottle, her dark curled hair bouncing lightly as she pushed it out of her face so she could once again turn to face Spencer. They were meant to be working but getting inviting in on cases was more than unlikely and therefore JJ was out trying to find them one, anything for them to be working on instead of being sat in their tiny office with paperwork. “Let’s be honest with each other, Reid. You don’t understand women all that well, you might have studied psychology and behaviour but when it comes to actually being with a woman; you struggle.”

Spencer chose not to take offence to Emily’s words because just at that moment Garcia burst in and announced that they had finally gotten a case. Excited wasn’t the right word because in an ideal world they wouldn’t have to have this job because people wouldn’t be going around killing others, but that wasn’t the world they were living in and they were just glad that they got to go out and help out with something. Emily pushed the rest of her lunch away before standing up, smoothing out the wrinkles in her pants before picking up her jacket from the back of her chair and motioning for Spencer to follow after her.

The case wasn’t a big one, they weren’t trusted with those ones yet since not a lot of people trusted them and the studying of behaviour to help solve crimes so they were often given cases like robberies and when they were lucky they could help out with a homicide. All the team wanted was to prove to everyone that what they were doing was a real way of predicting how criminals act and how to stop them before they do something, at the moment everyone thought they were bullshitting but with each case they solved they were a step closer to becoming respected.

The day went by quicker than expected, it was surprisingly easy to distract himself about you once he started getting back into his routine. If you could go back to how things were then he could as well, it was no fair that he would sit around moping while you got to succeed, while he wished all the best for you he wasn’t about to sit around until you got bored again and wanted him to come running back to you. He wondered if it was self centred of himself to think that you would do that, there was still part of him that believed you wanted more than just some fun but there wasn’t much evidence for that. You had dismissed him so quickly back at the club when he was about to refer to you as his girlfriend and even though you had been correct in saying you weren’t that, did you really not want anything like that from him? You’d talked about wanting to feel normal and when normality was offered to you it had been turned away, maybe Emily was right in saying Spencer didn’t really understand how to be with women.

After that, things sort of went back to how they were before you’d met, Spencer had another conversation with Hotch about the whole thing and how this time he was pretty certain things were over, that he wasn’t going to drop anything and leave spontaneously for a week again. Hotch seemed to believe him, Spencer didn’t know whether or not to be thankful for that because did that mean Hotch didn’t think you actually liked him? Did he knows something that he didn’t? You’d met each other before so it was possible that- Spencer stopped himself from freaking out about it since it didn’t matter anymore.

While you both tried to go back to how things were before, the world was trying its hardest to remind you of one other. A bouquet of flowers found its way to your dressing room from your agent and your immediate thought was that they were from Spencer, your heart racing as you darted forward to read the note but instead of finding an apology or a plea for you to return to him you instead just read a congratulations for arriving at your last day on set. You were constantly getting asked about him, if you were still together or where he was and Spencer had the same thing happening to him. He’d be out on a case and someone would recognise him from the newspapers and start chatting to him about you and how lucky he was, he’d have to politely draw their attention back to the case and try not to get caught up in his head at the mention of you.

Soon enough Spencer had managed to stop himself feeling sad when he thought about you, he was trying to train himself into thinking about things fondly but while also knowing that they were enough and he didn’t have to go back to you and create more memories. It had been fun but as you had pointed out more than once, he didn’t want your life and you didn’t want his. He was glad to see you succeeding, your first film was going to be coming out soon and while he was proud of you and knew how excited for this you were for it he knew the likelihood of him going and seeing it was slim. He’d talked to JJ about whether or not he should, worried that he might see you and then go running back to you and end up getting even more hurt than the last time. JJ wasn’t much help, she hadn’t been in a situation like that and just jokingly suggested that since she and Emily were going to see the movie that they would just tell him how you were in it so he didn’t have to go see it.

Spencer went home that day with his body feeling heavier than usual, it seemed to take him longer than usual to get up the stairs of his apartment because his feet refused to lift high enough for the steps. When he did finally make it up to his floor he was met with a splash of purple sat outside his door, definitely something that wasn’t there when he left that morning. Outside his door sat a bouquet of Purple Hyacinths, a flower known to symbolize regret or the request for forgiveness. It wasn’t everyday that he received flowers, actually he couldn’t recall a moment in his whole like where he had been gifted with a bouquet so he was sceptical about why now he would have some perched outside his apartment. He spotted a little card sticking out of the flowers and he bent down to pick it out, his heart fluttering when he saw the thin and curly handwriting and recognised it immediately.

_I know it’s been a while, and you don’t need to come but I’d love to see you there._

_All my love, (Y/N)_

Next to where the note had been sat another small card, on further inspection it was revealed to be a movie ticket for two weeks time. Spencer didn’t know whether to be happy or not that you wanted to see him again, it had been almost three months since you had said goodbye to one another and things had been good. They hadn’t been as good as they had been with you when things weren’t fucked up, but they had been good. He was happy being by himself and he didn’t know what your intentions were with this, whether or not you were just being kind or if you wanted something from him.

There was two weeks to make a decision, so instead of battling with himself over it now Spencer crouched back down and scooped up the bouquet and the vase it was in before unlocking his front door and taking it inside; knowing the perfect place to put them. His apartment was dark and dull and he liked it like that but he appreciated the splash of colour, he told himself it was because the flowers were his favourite colour and not because they were from you.


End file.
